Gamestop plans to close 200 stores, the company announced on its Q3 earnings call with analysts.

The videogame retailer reported today that sales fell 8.3 percent. CEO J. Paul Raines blamed the drop on “the longevity of the current console cycle and the difficult comparison of major new software titles released during the third quarter of 2012."

While 200 stores is substantial, GameStop still has a huge footprint, with more than 6,000 locations.

It's not the only retailer struggling with the downturn in the video game industry.

Toys 'R' Us CEO Jerry Storch told us last month that sales are down because video games are flopping, down 30 percent in the past year.

"There just hasn't been much excitement in that category and it drags the rest of sales down," Storch said. "It's not that the internet is taking away our business, which is a popular story."

See, I see this store as something along the lines of Blockbuster... an outdated model that is better served using internet, and given the advent of Redbox, you can rent games and try first - thus limiting the number of re-sells.

Plus, their overhead is so high that they only give $9 per game for a $60 game. Better to re-sell online.

I guess if we're going to blame every business that is outsmarted by the marketplace for 8 years on obama, that's cool then.

Hostess Brands said Wednesday that it will go into liquidation unless bakers striking in protest against a new contract imposed in bankruptcy court return to work by the end of the day Thursday.

"We simply do not have the financial resources to survive an ongoing national strike," Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn said in a statement.

The liquidation would result in Hostess' nearly 18,000 workers losing their jobs. The bakers' union represents around 5,000.

The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but has called the concessions demanded in the new contract "outrageous."

"Our members are on strike because they have had enough," bakers' union president Frank Hurt said in a statement Tuesday. "They are not willing to take draconian wage and benefit cuts on top of the significant concessions they made in 2004 and give up their pension so that the Wall Street vulture capitalists in control of this company can walk away with millions of dollars."

Texas Instruments said it will lay off about 1,700 workers, or about 5% of its total workforce, as part of a restructuring that will see it exit the market for mobile chips that power smartphones and tablets, including Amazon's Kindle Fire.

The company said it would instead focus its OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) business on embedded systems that power business tools and other products that don't evolve as rapidly as mobile gadgets.

The U.S. Postal Service said its net loss last year widened to $15.9 billion, more than the $15 billion it had projected, as mail volume continued to drop, falling 5 percent.

Mail sits at the U.S. Postal Service processing and distribution center in Merrifield, Virginia. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg .Without action by Congress, the service will run out of cash on Oct. 15, 2013, after it makes a required workers compensation payment to the U.S. Labor Department and before revenue typically jumps with holiday-season mailing, Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett said today.

The service, whose fiscal year ends Sept. 30, lost $5.1 billion a year earlier. It announced the 2012 net loss at a meeting at its Washington headquarters.

“We are walking a financial tightrope,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said at the meeting. “Will we ever stop delivering the mail? It will never happen. We are simply too important to the economy and the flow of commerce.”

The Postal Service uses about $250 million a day to operate and will have less than four days of cash on hand by the end of the fiscal year, Corbett said.

The service is asking Congress to enact legislation before it adjourns this year that would allow the Postal Service to spread future retirees’ health-benefit payments over more years, stop Saturday mail delivery, and more easily close post offices and processing plants.

Over Edge

“The Postal Service is facing a fiscal cliff of its own and any unanticipated drop in mail volumes could send the agency over the edge,” said Art Sackler, co-coordinator of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, whose members include Bank of America Corp. and EBay Inc. (EBAY) “If Congress fails to act, there could be postal slowdowns or shutdowns that would have catastrophic consequences for the 8 million private sector workers whose jobs depend on the mail.”

Without legislative change, the service expects its losses to continue in 2013, with a forecast loss of $7.6 billion for the year that started Oct. 1, Corbett said.

“There is no margin of error,” given the low level of cash, he said.

The service is trying to cut costs by giving retirement- eligible workers a financial incentive to retire. Those employees have a Dec. 3 deadline to accept the offer, with $200 million budgeted for the incentive costs in fiscal 2013.

Health Benefits

Next year’s loss forecast includes a $5.6 billion payment due to the U.S. Treasury for future retiree health benefits, Corbett told reporters after the meeting. The 2012 loss includes the $5.6 billion payment to the fund that the service defaulted on Sept. 30, and the previous year’s $5.5 billion obligation that was due Aug. 1 and also not paid. Because that year’s payment was deferred, the 2011 loss doesn’t include any pre- funding amount.

Mail volume for the year fell to 159.9 billion pieces, led by an 8 percent decrease in single-piece first-class items, the most profitable kind of mail that includes letters, cards and bill payments.

Operating revenue fell less than 1 percent to $65.2 billion for the year as the service cut work hours while delivering less mail.

The service’s outlook worsened this week, when the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said the service’s projected surplus in a government-worker retirement account has fallen to $2.6 billion, less than one-quarter of the previous year’s estimate, due to lower interest rates. It found another retirement account now has a $17.8 billion shortfall instead of a previously estimated surplus. The service has proposed tapping the surpluses to help cover its losses.

“Relying on a temporary, projected surplus to keep USPS solvent is a risk no matter which set of assumptions OPM is directed to use,” said Ali Ahmad, a spokesman for House Government and Reform Committee Chairman Darrel Issa, a California Republican who is a sponsor of a postal overhaul measure pending in the House. “It is no substitute for the actual cost-cutting USPS needs to do to find real savings.”

A massive positive revision to the September numbers helped offset the loss, but the state’s employment and economic development agency, DEED, reported major losses in administrative support and lower-paid business services jobs, which shed 4,800 jobs. State government lost 1,900 jobs, mostly in education, and durable goods manufacturing lost 800 jobs.

“Employment data for October does certainly reinforce the concerns we’ve expressed here, that the recovery, while it does continue, is a fragile one,” said Steve Hine, DEED’s labor market economist. “We’ll be paying a great deal of attention to Congress as they grapple with the so-called fiscal cliff.”

Hine said the weakness in business-to-business service jobs is a bad sign for the economy, even though many of the positions are on the low end of the pay spectrum and a large portion of them are temporary positions.

“You could see it as a leading indicator,” he said.

(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...

_______________________________________________________________

HOPE AND FUCKING CHANGE!!!!!

I warned everyone time and time and time and time again. Double Dip baby.

Barack Obama is set to begin his second term, new statistics on America’s poverty rate indicate that nearly 50 million Americans, more than 16 percent of the population, are struggling to survive.

New figures released by the Census Bureau this week found a spike in poverty numbers last year, going from 49 million in 2010 to 49.7 million last year. The numbers may come as a surprise to Congress, which estimated in September that the poverty rate would drop to 46.2 million.

Schoenberger is aping conventional wisdom. With stocks down 5% since the votes were tallied it's hard to argue that something in the results spooked investors. The question is what it was, since most of the results were exactly as expected. Schoenberger suggests it's a matter of there being no meaningful changes in the roster at any political level.

"Bottom line is that you have a Congress right now that can't seem to work with the President of the United States." he says in the attached clip. With the President back in office that gridlock unleashes an assortment of woes scaring off traders enough to cause the market to rollover without anyone buying the dip.

Whatever the merits of the arguments Schoenberger rattles off four specific reasons why traders aren't buying stocks. The claims are his own but there's nothing in his list you won't hear on any trading floor over the last week:

1. Companies aren't going to hire with the increased expenses associated with Obamacare

2. People aren't going to have money for discretionary spending when taxes going up for the 1%

3. Small business owners won't expand

4. Higher tax rates for individuals making over $250,000 a year will result in a general lack of ambition.

"There's no reason right now to work hard and actually do something with your life, to actually become a huge success," Schoenberger wails, "because, if you are, you're the villain and villains are meant for Batman and Spiderman movies, not for America right now."

Apparently we all have some time to kill. Spend some of yours by letting us know whether or not you're buying the dip and what the government has to do with it. Comment below or visit us on Facebook!

Talk about a short celebration. Just eight hours after President Obama walked onto a Chicago stage to give his victory speech to an adoring crowd, his re-election party would come to a crashing close. As the opening bell rang on Wall Street, investors, who only days ago sought certainty, had suddenly become skeptics. The thought of four more years was suddenly not so appealing, as stocks posted their biggest one-day drop in a year.

When asked if the country was on track to be better off four years from now, Peter Schiff, author of The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy, answers an unequivocal "no."

"If Obama thinks that Bush dealt him a weak hand, wait til we see how much weaker the hand is going to be that Obama deals his successor," Schiff says in the attached video. "We're going to be in much worse shape.''

How so? Well, in many ways if you follow the thinking of this well known, articulate and published uber-Bear. By Schiff's calculations, "the stock market is correct in going down" today since he says higher taxes on companies (at the corporate and/or individual level) makes those companies less valuable. So lower stocks is one area he predicts.

Being deeper in debt is another. In fact, he says we'll be at $20 trillion in a couple of years, and going higher from there. And this will bring upon the country's next looming crisis.

"I think what's going to happen in Obama's second term is going to be a currency crisis; a sovereign debt crisis. It's going to be the same thing that is happening in Europe or Greece," he says, "but it's going to be a lot worse."

Also, this noted gold bug is forecasting higher unemployment, higher food and energy prices, as well as sharply higher interest rates. He brushes aside the fact that a current flight to quality is benefiting both Treasuries and the dollar right now.

"A few years ago, people wanted to buy Greek bonds too. People want to do a lot of foolish things," Schiff fires back. "There's a lot of fools out there but eventually reality is going to set in and we're going to have a monetary crisis. We're going to have a bond crisis. And we're heading right for it."

This is what Schiff call the real fiscal cliff. If he's right, you've been warned. If he's wrong, it's a buying opportunity. Give us your thoughts and feedback down below.

First Class mail volume (which is protected by legal monopoly) peaked in 2001 and has declined 29% from 1998 to 2008, due to the increasing use of email and the World Wide Web for correspondence and business transactions.

That's all Obama?

No - but the horrible economy that did not, is not, and will not recover so long as he is there is making things a lot worse.

A very important article came out from the Wall Street Journal yesterday titled “FHA Nears Need for Taxpayer Funds,” and it outlines the serious financial problems facing the Federal Housing Administration. For those that are unaware or need a refresher, the FHA has been the key element to the phony “housing recovery” the government has been trying to create. In the wake of the collapse of 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac blew up and what was left to pick up the pieces was the FHA. No private player would issue loans with down payments of 3%, but this was no problem for the FHA!

Interestingly enough, a lot of the subprime borrowers that blew up the housing market the last time became the primary customers of the FHA. Let’s see, 3% down and subprime borrowers…what could possibly go wrong?! From the WSJ:

The Federal Housing Administration is expected to report this week it could exhaust its reserves because of rising mortgage delinquencies, according to people familiar with the agency’s finances, a development that could result in the agency needing to draw on taxpayer funding for the first time in its 78-year history. Together with Fannie and Freddie, federal agencies are backing nearly nine in 10 new mortgages.

The FHA accounted for one third of loans used to purchase homes last year among owner occupants.

Though the agency guarantees fewer mortgages than either Fannie or Freddie, it now has more seriously delinquent loans than either of the mortgage-finance giants. Overall, the FHA insured nearly 739,000 loans that were 90 days or more past due or in foreclosure at the end of September, an increase of more than 100,000 loans from a year ago. That represents about 9.6% of its $1.08 trillion in mortgages guaranteed.

This is a big deal. The FHA is already in trouble despite a miraculous “housing recovery” and we haven’t even hit a severe cyclical economic slowdown yet, which is almost certain to occur in 2013. What shambles do you think the housing market will be in once that happens and the last backstop to housing is broke? You can kiss this “housing recovery” goodbye. I think home prices nationally could fall 25%+ from here. For more detailed thoughts on housing read my piece from April titled Thought of the Day – House Flipping in Colorado.

The Federal Reserve is asking 30 big banks to make sure their capital can withstand a deep recession in which the unemployment rate rises to 12%.

The Fed, which first required big banks to conduct “stress tests” in 2009, laid out three scenarios lenders have to test against. The goal is to ensure that the firms have enough capital to continue operations during stressful economic times.

The venture finance operation that raised money for crony capitalist investorsKleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, and their green tech firms like electric car companyFisker Automotive ($193 million paid in stimulus loan guarantees) and fuel cell manufacturerBloom Energy, is shutting down, according to a Fortune report.

Advanced Equities, Inc. had recently been reprimanded by the Securities and Exchange Commission and by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for misleading investors and for breach of contract with its brokers. Fortune cited sources that said AEI brokers were told last week that Monday would be their last day. Crain’s Chicago Business confirmed that AEI was shutting down its broker-dealer business following its regulatory troubles, which “made it difficult to run the business.”

The co-founders of the Chicago-based firm, Dwight Badger and Keith Daubenspeck, received a sharp reprimand and severe fines from the SEC in September for delivering allegedly false information to potential funders in attempts to gain private equity investment. In two separate offerings in 2009 and 2010, Badger (who left the firm in June) was accused of boasting to investors that the financial condition and business orders for an Advanced Equities’ client – revealed by Crain’s to be Bloom Energy – far exceeded reality.

And in June this year Advanced Equities was ordered by a FINRA arbitration panel to pay $4.5 million to one of its former brokers, John Galinsky, over breach of contract claims. Bloom Energy was one of the companies that Galinsky raised capital for, without receiving commission, according to FINRA. After the ruling was announced, Advanced Equities reached an agreement with Badger for him to leave the firm.

“The panel finds that Respondents (including Badger and Daubenspeck) exhibited a reckless disregard for the warrant rights of the broker and breached their fiduciary duties to the broker,” the FINRA dispute resolution said.

AEI, according to GreentechMedia.com , has been sometimes referred to as a “bucket shop,” which is not complimentary. The co-founders were also accused in a 2008 Forbes Magazine article of “foisting junky startups on investors.”

“The problem with this picture is that in vaulting (Advanced Equities) to its high perch in the VC world, Daubenspeck and Badger have left a wake of aggrieved customers, furious former employees, lawsuits and more than their share of busted startups,” Forbes reported. “At least 18 former clients have filed arbitration complaints accusing the firm of wrongdoing. Separately, six brokers have alleged that AE stiffed them for millions of dollars.”

In February an investor sued Fisker and Advanced Equities for their alleged failure to perform fiduciary duties and for fraud . Daniel Wray alleged that after he bought $210,000 of preferred stock between 2009 and 2011, Fisker and Advanced Equities demanded more than $83,000 “due to Fisker’s urgent need for equity capital,” or else he would lose privileges that came with his purchase of earlier stock, which would be diluted.

Why Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins would have anything to do with Badger and Daubenspeck as it sought to raise money for pet projects like Fisker and Bloom Energy is unknown. Kleiner’s best-known partner is former Vice President Al Gore, who is also a supporter of Fisker and purchased one of its first Karma models. In news reports Fisker has boasted raising more than $1 billion in private funds, and Bloom has been closely allied with Kleiner Perkins with hundreds of millions of dollars raised.

Another linchpin between Kleiner, Bloom and Fisker is John Doerr, who serves on President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness . Doerr and his Kleiner Perkins colleagues have donated well over $2.6 million to candidates and political action committees, favoring Democrats over Republicans by a very wide margin, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Doerr also hosted a dinner for President Obama at his estate in February 2011 with several other high-tech executives, according to ABC News.

Somehow amidst these dubious actors and Obama cronies the analysts at the Department of Energy found Fisker worthy of a $529-million stimulus loan guarantee. Ever since the car company has experienced an almost comical (it would be hilarious, if taxpayer money wasn’t at stake) series of blunders, including: tworecalls;layoffs; vehiclefires; an unfulfilled promise to manufacture cars at a former General Motors plant in Delaware; state taxpayers paying the utility bills for that empty plant; and the aforementioned investor lawsuit and investigation of Advanced Equities, Fisker’s primary fundraiser. The crowning blow wasConsumer Reports’ determination in September that the Fisker Karma is the worst luxury sedan on the U.S. market.

And now Fortune has also reported that subpoenas of Advanced Equities may exist with regard to its fundraising efforts for “another well-known clean tech company.” Considering that pretty much every other company Badger and Daubenspeck helped is “unknown,” those troubles could involve Fisker.

Obviously the who, how and why of stimulus loan applicants’ private fundraising practices were not part of the due diligence review process by DOE. Advanced Equities is now shutting down, and DOE cut off Fisker’s loan after paying out $193 million due to its shortcomings, yetPresident Obama has promised more government money for renewable schemes in his second term.

Watch for more cronies and those from the bottom of the “bucket shops” to capitalize.

Paul Chesser is an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center and publishes CarolinaPlottHound.com , an aggregator of North Carolina news.

Community College of Allegheny County will trim hours for about 400 of its part-time workers to avoid having to provide them with health insurance coverage, the school's president, Alex Johnson, said Thursday. Mr. Johnson told members of Allegheny County Council that complying with the requirements of the federal Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, would have cost CCAC $6 million annually for part-timers who have been working at least 30 hours per week. Affected employees include both adjunct faculty and maintenance workers. CCAC has an annual operating budget of about $110 million and is facing reductions in county support for 2013 that could be as large as $2.3 million. Mr. Johnson advised council of the plan to cut part-timers' hours as part of CCAC efforts to keep its costs under control.

And that’s that: Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and more, announced this morning it has filed a motion with bankruptcy court to start liquidating the company immediately. A huge number of jobs are soon to be lost.

“Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce,” said CEO Gregory F. Rayburn in the statement, “and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.”

In a letter posted on a new site set up to communicate with employees and suppliers through the liquidation process, Mr. Rayburn pinned the blame on its striking union:

Despite everyone’s considerable efforts to move Hostess out of its restructuring, when we began implementing the Company’s last, best and final offer, the Bakers Union chose to stage a crippling strike. This affected Hostess’ ability to continue to make products and service its customers’ needs and pushed Hostess into a Wind Down scenario. As a result, we are forced to proceed with an orderly wind down and sale of our operations and assets. We deeply regret taking this action. But we simply cannot continue to operate without the ability to produce or deliver our products.

There’s no way to soften the fact that this will hurt every Hostess Brands employee. All Hostess Brands employees will eventually lose their jobs – some sooner than others. Unfortunately, because we are in bankruptcy, there are severe limits on the assistance the Company can offer you at this time.

Medical supply giant Stryker is the latest company to announce job cuts in anticipation of coming costs associated with ObamaCare, even though the man who inherited a fortune from the company's founder is a fan.

The company will cut 1,170 jobs, or five percent of its worldwide workforce, despite the fact that the founder's grandson was one of the largest contributors to President Obama’s re-election campaign. Medical tech scion Jon Stryker, whose net worth is currently estimated at $1.2 billion, contributed $2 million to the Priorities USA Action super PAC and has given $66,000 in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party. Stryker does not run the company.

A "medical device excise tax" included in the mandate imposes a 2.3 percent levy on medical device manufacturers and suppliers, which critics say will raise prices on everything from pacemakers to prosthetics to stents. Companies will be required to pay the tax regardless if they have a profit or loss for the year. The tax is estimated to cost the medical device industry $20 billion.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The unemployment rate in California inched down slightly in October as the state Employment Development Department issued a dire warning that federal help for the long-term unemployed may soon run out.

The unemployment rate dipped to 10.1 percent in October – down from 10.2 percent a month earlier – after 45,800 jobs added to payrolls, according to the EDD’s Loree Levy.

“It certainly looks like the job creation engine is picking up some speed as we go toward the end of the year, so it’s good news,” Levy said.

Levy added the number of jobs created far outstripped the traditional rate of population growth – about 20,000 – during the same period.

Retail posted some of the biggest gains, with another 20,500 jobs added slightly ahead of the start of the busy Christmas shopping season.

“Normally we would expect a pretty strong gain in November,” Levy said. “To give you an idea, last October for instance, we saw a 2,000-job gain in retail trade, so [it was] certainly much stronger this year.”

But the otherwise positive data was overshadowed by a looming Congressional deadline at the end of the year, when the federal extension of unemployment benefits expires.

“That means no matter what kind of balance anyone has left on any kind of federal extension claim, no further payments can be made after the week ending December 29,” she said.

Levy estimated the deadline could mean a “very sudden stop” to benefits for as many as 400,000 unemployed statewide.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The unemployment rate in California inched down slightly in October as the state Employment Development Department issued a dire warning that federal help for the long-term unemployed may soon run out.

The unemployment rate dipped to 10.1 percent in October – down from 10.2 percent a month earlier – after 45,800 jobs added to payrolls, according to the EDD’s Loree Levy.

“It certainly looks like the job creation engine is picking up some speed as we go toward the end of the year, so it’s good news,” Levy said.

Levy added the number of jobs created far outstripped the traditional rate of population growth – about 20,000 – during the same period.

Retail posted some of the biggest gains, with another 20,500 jobs added slightly ahead of the start of the busy Christmas shopping season.

“Normally we would expect a pretty strong gain in November,” Levy said. “To give you an idea, last October for instance, we saw a 2,000-job gain in retail trade, so [it was] certainly much stronger this year.”

But the otherwise positive data was overshadowed by a looming Congressional deadline at the end of the year, when the federal extension of unemployment benefits expires.

“That means no matter what kind of balance anyone has left on any kind of federal extension claim, no further payments can be made after the week ending December 29,” she said.

Levy estimated the deadline could mean a “very sudden stop” to benefits for as many as 400,000 unemployed statewide.

November 15, 2012A Country Unhingedby Victor Davis HansonNRO’s The Corner

In the last week, it is almost as if the entire American moral landscape has been turned upside down in eerie fashion — in matters that vastly transcend fornication and adultery. The Petraeus-gate matter is the stuff of tabloids now; but soon the real issues relating to when and what Eric Holder knew, and by extension the president, and how exactly Benghazi (the crime of indifference to the besieged, the cover-up of the truth, the actual mission of our consulate and annex) fits into this labyrinth of deceit, both petty and fundamental, may overshadow the present sensationalism.

Nothing seems real anymore, not pre-election federal data on jobs or food stamps or the release of such “facts”; not foreign-policy information like an Iranian attack on a drone; not the supposedly competent federal relief in response to Hurricane Sandy. Even Saddam Hussein’s plebiscites could not achieve margins like the 19,605 to 0 we saw in 59 Philadelphia precincts. Does anyone care?

Susan Rice, who flat out deceived five times in a single day on national TV, is supposedly seriously being considered as Secretary of State when Ms. Clinton leaves — the latter now plans to be “busy” when hearings on Libya resume. (If a John Bolton cannot be confirmed as a UN ambassador, how could Rice avoid a filibuster?) How can anyone now read Broadwell’s book and assume the research and analysis are disinterested? How did a single Jill Kelley warrant hundreds of hours of chat time from our highest generals, engaged in a life and death struggle in the war against terror and Afghanistan? Who was not consulted, not advised, not ordered — in order to free up time for Kelley and Broadwell? How could Broadwell, without a journalistic or history pedigree of achievement, warrant such intimate briefings, so much so that she can pontificate on a CIA annex in Benghazi and purportedly have access to classified documents? If she can, who cannot? Why in God’s name does Angelina Jolie get photographed on the seventh-floor office of the CIA? Why even have security clearances when you can learn classified details about our military and intelligence on Facebook or YouTube? How can all this suddenly explode on the scene, just 72 hours after a national election, in a supposedly transparent country with a free, watch-dog media? Have we become a Russia, Venezuela, Cuba? Is there one honest person in Washington left?

When this is all over we are going to see several resignations, even more discredit to what is left of what is now largely a state-run media, and a vivid human face to all the declinist statistical talk of America in material and moral crisis. The state is set for reform like we have never seen it, from those who are not invested in Big Washington, Big Military, Big Intelligence, Big Banks, Big Wall Street, big anything that seems to have developed a toxic careerism in the revolving-door, New York-Washington corridor.

Tragedy or Tragicomedy?

One symptom of this entire tragedy (or is it dark comedy now?) is the shocking degree of casual sorta/kinda rules and protocols — strange (or rather predictable) in this era of vast bureaucratic rules. How exactly did national-security and military affairs come to resemble Keeping Up with the Kardashians?

How can some individual just call up an FBI friend (?) and thereby instigate an FBI investigation? And how did that lead to an FBI agent photographing himself bare-chested and apparently infatuated with a married mother of three? How can a PhD candidate, without any journalistic or historical credentials, become the public face of a four-star general and be privy to information to the point of hitting the lecture circuit to pontificate about a CIA annex in Benghazi? How did an early-middle-aged married mother of two suddenly morph into a court biographer who lectured on everything from military practice to leadership to national-security challenges? How can a Florida socialite by any stretch of the imagination merit a vast email correspondence with the nation’s highest ranking warriors entrusted to conduct our most critical struggles? What in the world is an “honorary consul general” and who extends such Alice Through the Looking Glass titles? Why do generals seek to go back stage to meet a Denzel Washington or have Angelina Jolie pop up for a photo-op?

I think it is impossible that an attorney general who knew of the investigation and many of the details for months did not tell his president and close friend — but then on the other hand, given all of above, who knows?

The Obama administration on Friday rebuffed requests by Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the leaders of several other states to waive a federal renewable fuel mandate that requires ethanol to be blended into the nation's gasoline supply.

In rejecting the waiver requests, the Environmental Protection Agency effectively disagreed with the states' concerns that the mandate was spiking corn demand and prices following a drought that devastated crops in the Midwest. The EPA concluded the Renewable Fuel Standard would not cause "severe economic harm" to states and regions.

"We recognize that this year's drought has created hardship in some sectors of the economy, particularly for livestock producers," said Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. "But our extensive analysis makes clear that congressional requirements for a waiver have not been met and that waiving the RFS will have little, if any, impact."

This is the second time Perry has lost his bid for a renewable fuel standard exemption...

Bad news for GE Healthcare workers in Vermont. The company, which specializes in information technology for the healthcare industry, announced last Thursday that it plans to lay off about 10 percent of its workforce in the state. The company promised, however, to try to find “alternate roles” for those who lose their jobs.

“While GE Healthcare regrets the loss of any jobs, the business needs to make tough decisions in the current economic climate,” company spokesman Benjamin Fox told the Barre Montpelier Times Argus.

It’s unclear at this time how much of GE Healthcare’s workforce these cuts represent, though the Burlington Free Press reported that in January, GE Healthcare employed about 527 people.

The company’s South Burlington, Vermont facility was founded as the medical software producer IDX Systems. GE Healthcare bought IDX in 2005 for $1.2 billion.

Vermont Deputy Commerce Secretary Patricia Moulton Powden called the job losses at GE Healthcare “tragic,” but noted that there are other high-tech companies in the area looking for talented employees.

“The only silver lining is we have a lot of employers looking for this kind of talent,” said Moulton Powden.

Earlier this month, the healthcare giant posted profits of $620 million on sales of $4.31 billion during the three months ended September 30, for a bottom-line gain of two percent but a top-line dip of 0.6 percent, compared with the same period last year. Layoffs have been common as of late across the entire medical devices industry.